Part 22 (2/2)

News, of a kind, travels on the wings of the wind across wastes of the farther land. Princ.i.p.alities may fall, nations crash, and kingdoms sink into oblivion, and the North will neither know nor care. For the North has its own problems--vital problems, human problems--and therefore big. Elemental, portentous problems, having to do with life and the eating of meat.

In the crash and s.h.i.+ft of man-made governments; in the redistribution of man-const.i.tuted authority, and man-gathered surplus of increment, the North has no part. On the cold side of sixty there is no surplus, and men think in terms of meat, and their possessions are meat-getting possessions. Guns, nets, and traps, even of the best, insure but a bare existence. And in the lean years, which are the seventh years--the years of the rabbit plague--starvation stalks in the teepees, and gaunt, sunken-eyed forms, dry-lipped, and with the skin drawn tightly over protruding ribs, stiffen between shoddy blankets.

For even the philosophers of the land of G.o.d and the H.B.C. must eat to live--if not this week, at least once next week.

The H.B.C., taking wise cognizance of the seventh year, extends it credit--”debt” it is called in the outlands--but it puts no more wool in its blankets, and for lack of food the body-fires burn low. But the cold remains inexorable. And with the thermometer at seventy degrees below zero, even in the years of plenty, when the philosophers eat almost daily, there is little of comfort. With the thermometer at seventy in the lean years, the suffering is diminished by the pa.s.sing of many philosophers.

The arrest of Bob MacNair was a matter of sovereign import to the dwellers of the frozen places, and word of it swept like wildfire through the land of the lakes and rivers. Yet in all the North those upon whom it made the least impression were those most vitally concerned--MacNair's own Indians. So quietly had the incident pa.s.sed that not one of them realized its importance.

With them MacNair was _G.o.d_. He was the _law_. He had taught them to work, so that even in the lean years they and their wives and their babies ate twice each day. He had said that they should continue to eat twice each day, and therefore his departure was a matter of no moment. They knew only that he had gone southward with the man of the soldier-police. This was doubtless as he had commanded. They could conceive of MacNair only as commanding. Therefore the soldier-policeman had obeyed and accompanied him to the southward.

With no such complacency, however, was the arrest of MacNair regarded by the henchmen of Lapierre. To them MacNair was not G.o.d, nor was he the law. For these men knew well the long arm of the Mounted and what lay at the end of the trail. Lean forms sped through the woods, and the word pa.s.sed from lip to lip in far places. It was whispered upon the Slave, the Mackenzie, and the Athabasca, and it was told in the provinces before MacNair and Ripley reached Fort Chippewayan. Along the river, men talked excitedly, and impatiently awaited word from Lapierre, while their eyes snapped with greed and their thoughts flew to the gold in the sands of the barren grounds.

In the Bastile du Mort, a hundred miles to the eastward, Lapierre heard the news from the lips of a breathless runner, but a scant ten hours after Corporal Ripley and MacNair stepped from the door of the cottage.

And within the hour the quarter-breed was upon the trail, travelling light, in company with LeFroy, who, fearing swift vengeance, had also sought safety in the stronghold of the outlaws.

Chloe Elliston stood in the doorway and watched the broad form of Bob MacNair swing across the clearing in company with Corporal Ripley. As the men disappeared in the timber, a fierce joy of victory surged through her veins. She had bared the mailed fist! Had wrested a people from the hand of their oppressor! The Snare Lake Indians were henceforth to be _her_ Indians! She had ridded the North of MacNair!

Every fibre of her sang with the exultation of it as she turned into the room and encountered the fishlike stare of Big Lena.

The woman leaned, ponderous and silent, against the jamb of the door giving into the kitchen. Her huge arms were folded tightly across her breast, and, for some inexplicable reason, Chloe found the stare disconcerting. The enthusiasm of her victory damped perceptibly. For if the fish-eyed stare held nothing of reproach, it certainly held nothing of approbation. Almost the girl read a condescending pity in the stare of the china-blue eyes. The thought stung, and she faced the other wrathfully.

”Well, for Heaven's sake say something! Don't stand there and stare like a--a billikin! Can't you talk?”

”Yah, Ay tank Ay kin; but Ay von't--not yat.”

”What do you mean?” cried the exasperated girl, as she flung herself into a chair. But without deigning to answer, Big Lena turned heavily into the kitchen, and closed the door with a bang that impoverished invective--for volumes may be spoken--in the banging of a door. The moment was inauspicious for the entrance of Harriet Penny. At best, Chloe merely endured the little spinster, with her whining, hysterical outbursts, and abject, unreasoning fear of G.o.d, man, the devil, and everything else. ”Oh, my dear, I am so glad!” piped the little woman, rus.h.i.+ng to the girl's side: ”we need never fear him again, need we?”

”n.o.body ever did fear him but you,” retorted Chloe.

”But, Mr. Lapierre said----”

The girl arose with a gesture of impatience, and Miss Penny returned to MacNair. ”He is so big, and coa.r.s.e, and horrible! I am sure even his looks are enough to frighten a person to death.”

Chloe sniffed. ”I think he is handsome, and he is big and strong. I like big people.”

”But, my dear!” cried the horrified Miss Penny. ”He--he kills Indians!”

”So do I!” snapped the girl, and stamped angrily into her own room, where she threw herself upon the bed and gave way to bitter reflections. She hated everyone. She hated MacNair, and Big Lena, and Harriet Penny, and the officer of the Mounted. She hated Lapierre and the Indians, too. And then, realizing the folly of her blind hatred, she hated herself for hating. With an effort she regained her poise.

”MacNair is out of the way; and that's the main thing,” she murmured.

She remembered his last words: ”Beware of Pierre Lapierre,” and her eyes sought the man's hastily scribbled note that lay upon the table where he had left it. She reread the note, and crumpling it in her hand threw it to the floor. ”He always manages to be some place else when anything happens!” she exclaimed. ”Oh, why couldn't it have been the other way around? Why couldn't MacNair have been the one to have the interest of the Indians at heart? And why couldn't Lapierre have been the one to browbeat and bully them?”

She paced angrily up and down the room, and kicked viciously at the little ball of paper that was Lapierre's note. ”He couldn't browbeat anything!” she exclaimed. ”He's--he's--sometimes, I think, he's almost _sneaking_, with his bland, courtly manners, and his suave tongue. Oh, how I could hate that man! And how I--” she stopped suddenly, and with clenched fists fixed her gaze upon the portrait of Tiger Elliston, and as she looked the thin features that returned her stare seemed to resolve into the rugged outlines of the face of Bob MacNair.

”He's big and strong, and he's not afraid,” she murmured, and started nervously at the knock with which Big Lena announced supper.

When Chloe appeared at the table five minutes later she was quite her usual self. She even laughed at Harriet Penny's horrified narrative of the fact that she had discovered several Indians in the act of affixing runners to the collapsible bathtubs in antic.i.p.ation of the coming snow.

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